Pro-choice doctors in Malta encourage women to lie about obtaining an abortion

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Pro-choice doctors in Malta have recently encouraged women to lie about having a medical abortion when presenting in hospital with post-abortion complications, in a bid to protect women from facing legal issues, but this has been criticised as showing no regard to the potential risks this would have on the lives of women.

Abortion was illegal in Malta until 2023, where a bill was approved by the government to allow for an abortion for medical reasons. Since, it has been reported that 5 babies have been aborted in Malta since the law was implemented. If a woman is found guilty of an abortion in Malta, she does face a prison sentence, as well as a doctor who performs an abortion.

In response to a case of a woman who pleaded guilty and was prosecuted for an abortion after presenting at a hospital with a post-abortion complication, Natalie Psaila Stabile, a pro-choice medical doctor who runs an abortion doula service, took to Facebook to tell women to lie about whether they have had an abortion when presenting to an emergency room in a hospital, in an apparent move to protect women from legal issues.

“If you need to go to hospital, you should never tell anyone that you’ve taken abortion pills.” She said, and even urged them to “show sadness, upset, and disappointment” as the loss of their pregnancy.

“I apologise for asking you to lie and act falsely, but this is the only way to keep you and your loved ones safe,” she added, claiming that it will allow women “to get the medical treatment they deserve while avoiding the legal problems”.

Psaila Stabile’s mother, Isabelle Stabile, a pro-choice gynaecologist who runs the abortion doula service with her daughter, has claimed also that the abortion pill is “very safe” and that lying about the cause of any symptoms resulting from the medical abortion will not in any way “hinder the medical treatment”.

“But there are, for a variety of reasons, the one-off cases where heavy bleeding occurs and the person would require hospitalisation,” she said.

However, Live Action also report that abortionists urging women to lie about their abortion is not new and has been ongoing in the US for several years, including during the time of Roe v Wade.  

“This isn’t about protecting women. It’s about protecting abortion,” said Nancy Flanders from Live Action, pointing out that lying about an abortion when medical complications arise skews the data and makes “the abortion pill appear safer than it is, and pregnancy more dangerous than it is.”

Carole Novielli also wrote on Live Action about the issue saying that “Planned Parenthood essentially told women to lie so the abortion pill’s true complications would never be reported to anyone — which likely made the abortion pill’s adverse events look much more rare than they actually were.”

“This has allowed the industry to fraudulently tout the pill’s supposed ‘safety’,” she continued. “If women place the blame for complications on natural miscarriage, then pregnancy and natural miscarriage complications are being inflated. As this has been happening for 20 years, it could potentially be driving up the pregnancy costs to women.”

“This deception led to the lifting of safeguards surrounding the abortion pill, and is now causing more women to be put at risk of complications — all while they are told the drug is safe,” she concluded.

Live Action report that some risks involved in the use of a chemical abortion include hemorrhage, infection, incomplete abortion, sepsis, and death, and with the skewed data and subsequent lifting of safeguards, the lives of women are at now greater risk, adding that “the same may happen in Malta if abortion enthusiasts get their way.”

Sandra Parda of the Life Institute commented saying: “This is outrageous. It becomes much clearer that those in favour of abortion have no consideration for women. All they want is to push and protect abortion.”

“Women are being failed by abortion. Women are being told the lie that abortion will solve their problems and they are being told the lie that abortion is safe and complications are “very rare”. This is based on inaccurate data. Urging women to lie about their abortion when needing medical treatment does nothing put their lives at risk. There is nothing pro-woman about that.”